Using Swedish data, we investigate whether the effectiveness of an entrepreneurship policy programme can be traced over time among those firms it supports. The results are drawn from a longitudinal matched pair analysis. Hypotheses were tested every year for eight years. The main conclusions are: when bias is considered the public support programme has not generated measurable additionality and the programme has to some extent been able to select firms on a general level; however, among those selected, the scheme has not been able to identify potentially successful firms.

Using longitudinal data which include real estate wealth, financial assets as well as consumer durables, changes in the distribution of wealth in Sweden are related to major changes in asset prices and in incentives to hold various assets in the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Our analysis of the mobility of wealth indicates that decile mobility is higher in Sweden than in the U.S., while the analysis of who is gaining and who is loosing shows results similar to those of previous studies.